Christmas Ornament Learning Activities

These learning activities don’t use actual Christmas ornaments, but they do use the shapes of ornaments to aid in learning, or making an ornament with an educational twist.

Look We’re Learning has a set of printable worksheets using Christmas ornaments to learn about patterns that are the same and different. There are color and black and white versions included so you can have kids color all the ornaments, or just color the ones that match.

Learn about patterns and make your own with these free printables from Planes and Balloons. There are options for picking what comes next in a repeating pattern, blank ornaments so you can make your own pattern, and a coloring sheet with different designs of ornaments and you can draw lines to the matching ones or color them the same.

Little learners can practice tracing short lines with these printable ornaments from Fluffy Tots. You can get a sample for free or buy a set of 60 different ornaments that let kids practice short straight, curved and curly lines.

Add a bit of critical thinking to your Christmas learning activities with this Christmas decoder project from STEAM Powered Family. Use the symbols on the ornaments to decode the secret message, then find the word that matches and put the ornament back together. There are also blank ornaments so kids can write their own messages, or you can use the code to make up your own statements and have kids decode them.

Get kids coding for Christmas with these binary code ornaments from Little Bins for Little Hands. Once you know the basics of binary you can spell out holiday themed words, kids names or other secret messages and turn them into holiday ornaments.

And while we’re making ornaments with an educational twist, why not paint some ornaments that teach kids about symmetry? Download templates from Crafting a Fun Life or have kids draw their own, paint on half and make a symmetrical ornament that’s perfect for displaying in the classroom.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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